The Gems A Magical Adventure Wiki:Creating a fanon
Starting a fanon of your own may seem a bit tricky sometimes, so here is a guide with some useful tricks and advice for new fanon authors. If you would ever encounter any issues, don't hesitate to contact an and they'll try to help you out to the best of their abilities. Creating a fanon Pre-production Before starting a fanon, it is useful to know wiki mark-up, the code that wikia uses. If you're a new user, you probably use RTE (Rich Text Editor), which still has a lot of glitches. To save yourself a big headache, it's best that you have a user account, go into at the top, and click on editing, uncheck "Enable Rich Text Editor" and make sure to hit "Save Change". Whenever you'll edit a page from then on, you'll do so in "source mode," which enables you to view the coding on a page directly, thus minimizing the chance of any glitches to occur and mess up your page's layout. In case of any troubles, leave a message on an administrator's talk page. A useful tip before actually publishing your fanon on the fanon portal is to plan a bit of it out beforehand. This doesn't mean that you should've worked out every detail on paper before putting it on the wiki, but having a list of the major characters and/or locations the story will be in, and some major points in the fanon's plot, a general idea of what the story will be about is always useful to prevent future writer's blocks. A trick to see how a page would turn out without officially posting it, is to create a sandbox. To do this, you simply go to your userpage, and add the name of your sandbox behind the url given there. Next, follow the link to that page. It will say "This page needs content. You can help by adding a sentence or a photo! Add to this page!" You then click the button "Create" which is located on the same place the edit button normally is, and start adding content to the page. After you're done, just click "Publish" and you have created a sandbox. :E.g. If Queen Luna would want to make a sandbox for her fanon, named "Fanon:The Love of Disappointment", the sandbox's link would be User:Queen Luna/TLoD_Sandbox. Main Page To start off your new fanfiction, it's best to create a main page, which will act as the hub of the fanon by containing links to chapters and characters, providing information on the story, and show news and updates. There are two ways to make a page: either go to the fanon portal, which may be easier for newer users, or go here. If you use the second option, however, remember that whenever you create a fanon article, the prefix Fanon: should be added in front of the name. E.g. Fanon:The Love of Disappointment Chapters Chapters are going to be the most important part of your fanon. After all, they actually tell the story. It is advised to first create several chapter pages before starting to create pages for characters, battles, and locations. Create a new page, add the prefix Fanon:____ then your chapter name, and you can get to work. Title You'll notice that some authors prefer to specifically state the chapter number and/or their fanon's title between parenthesis in their title (E.g. "Chapter 1: Two Separate Lives (TPoF)"). There is no set format for this and it is left to the authors preference. Note that if you use this format, it is easier for passersby to immediately notice the chapter number and the fanon series it is a part of. Categories In the end, you add the appropriate categories to your chapter page, which would be the Category: chapters (fanon). After you've added the chapter category for the first time, you still have to create the actual category. For more information about categories in general, read the fanon categorization guide. Continuity Making a fanon You should know, it's not easy to make a fanon. You have to write out chapters, and maybe character pages, battles, events, etc. You have to organize it, and hope that people like it, and keep reading it. It is a lot of work, so think it through before you begin. Please don't just make one and leave it to die. Fanon Fairies The Fanon Fairies (Fanon Specialists for boys) is a usergroup that is specifically created to aid users with their fanons by helping out with the spelling and grammar, template fixes, and/or rewrite the story—without altering the message of the tale—to bring it to a higher standard. So if you feel you need help with your fanon articles, feel free to contact the Fanon Fairies.